The COSMOS-Web survey, the largest cycle 1 General Observers JWST program, was proposed in 2021 (right) as a large-area survey overlapping with the COSMOS field acquired with Hubble. On the left, the full, completed COSMOS-Web field is shown. (Credit: COSMOS-Web collaboration)
By deeply imaging a large volume of space, COSMOS-Web provides JWST’s widest cosmic views. Its gravitational lenses reveal a big surprise.
The JWST era continues to show us the Universe as never before.
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This highly unusual object was spotted with JWST: a background spiral galaxy heavily distorted by the gravitational lensing effects of a foreground elliptical galaxy. This data was part of the Strong Lensing and Cluster Evolution (SLICE) survey, which targets galaxy cluster evolution; an independent complement to the gravitational lenses found as part of the wider-field COSMOS-Web survey. (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler; Acknowledgement: M. A. McDonald)
This image composite shows the full-field of a large galaxy cluster within the COSMOS-Web survey, using a combination of JWST NIRCam and Hubble infrared data, with X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray telescope overlaid in violet. The X-rays are evidence from the heated gas that occurs when galaxy clusters merge or experience major disruptive events. (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco, and the COSMOS-Web team)
This portion of the full COSMOS-Web field highlights several giant elliptical galaxies as well as many large, nearby massive spirals. Their large, massive, but low-surface-brightness extended halos are easily revealed by JWST, allowing astronomers to better determine how the stellar mass of galaxies evolves with time. Many candidate galaxy clusters and protoclusters, along with several gravitational lenses, can be seen in the background. (Credit: COSMOS-Web collaboration)
Massive objects, like foreground galaxies, gravitationally distort any light traveling along their line-of-sight.
